Z640 unable to swap original z-turbo G2 256 to 1Tb unit.

[ecpsys]

I bought a new z640 for myself almost 3 years ago. Once I realized that the original 256Gb z-Turbo was going to be too tight as a system drive, I bought a 1Tb z-Turbo G2. I was not able to replace the drive and use system disks to resetup unit. I ended up adding the 1Tb unit and spreading programs and Libraries to that drive. When i did that, I was pretty sure I saw a performance hit although I understand you should be able to have 2 z-turbo drives in the system.

I recently had the main board fail, which is pretty amazing as I have installed over 100 z series workstations for customers and have only had one z200SFF fail way out of warranty. I'm now really wanting to resetup this unit with the 1Tb as the system drive and can use the 256 to upgrade my work z230 from a hard drive.

I've tried getting Acronis to clone from one drive to the other. It doesn't recognize either drive. Interesting as I know I used the same Acronis disk to upgrade a customer z230 from a z-turbo G2 256 to 512. Trying to find disk cloning software that works with z-turbo seems to be a challenge.

As a test, I ran the original system disks and they don't recognize either the original 256 or the 1Tb unit. The original drivers disk doesn't have drivers for this either.

Support Assistant shows the original 256 as Samsung MZVPV256 and the 1Tb as THNSN51T02DU7, which seems strange.

I would love to start by cloning the 256 to 1Tb and see if the machine will boot. It does seem that I will need to make sure there is a way to reinstall the OS to the z-Turbo in the future. The specific driver they used seems a mystery.

This will remain Win7x64 for a long time as I need to support software that won't run Win10, and really I would prefer to never see WIn10 anyway. If forced to Win10, I may just decide that installing and supporting computers for customers for 42 may just be long enough.

[BambiBoomZ]

Ecpsys,

I believe- but am not absolutely certain, that a Z Turbo will only install when it is the only internal drive in the system.

Use the HP recommended slot- it's Slot 4 on a z640 fro the primary Z Turbo. I think the seond Z Turbo will go on Slot 5. There is an HP document on how to optimize the use of PCIE slots in the z640:

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/835673/Hp-Z640.html?page=10#manual

This idea is not guaranteed, but is low risk and not very time consuming. When I wished to clone a Samsung 860 EVO to a Z Turbo G1 AHCI drive instead of re-installing everything in a z620, I used this method via EaseUS Partition Master Technician:

1. Clone the current Z Turbo OS, Programs, and Libraries to a 2.5" SSD of sufficient size, but contained in an active  partition smaller than the destination drive partition

2. Place that drive in an external USB enclosure,

3. Mount the new 1TB Z Turbo, set any partitions, format, and set the new OS/Programs partition to active and

4. Clone from the USB copy to the Z Turbo,

5. Detach the USB drive and rename the new Z Turbo partition to C:

If that doesn't work, the original OS partition is intact. 

BambiBoomZ